Fresh arrests in the News hacking scandal

John F. Burns

London. Adding fresh momentum to police investigations that have already cost Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire in Britain hundreds of millions of dollars, Scotland Yard said Wednesday that six more journalists who previously worked for the News of the World tabloid were arrested at dawn on suspicion of hacking into cellphone messages.

The latest police swoop followed others in the past year that have resulted in the arrests of more than 100 reporters, editors, investigators, executives and public officials by police units investigating suspected criminal activity at British newspapers. Most of those have involved The Sun, Murdoch's daily tabloid, and News of the World, the highly profitable Sunday tabloid he shut down as the scandal broke in July 2011.

In an especially troublesome development for News Corporation, the New York-based parent company of the Murdoch newspapers, the Scotland Yard statement on the latest arrests said that they involved "a further suspected conspiracy to intercept telephone voice mail messages by a number of employees who worked for the now defunct News of the World newspaper" — in effect, a new break in the police inquiry, involving suspected wrongdoing beyond the wide pattern of phone hacking at the paper that has resulted in 26 previous arrests.

Police statement said that five of the arrests Wednesday took place in London, and one in Cheshire, a county that lies to the south of the northern city of Manchester. It said those held for questioning included three men and three women, all in their 30s and 40s, none of whom were named. The Sun later confirmed that two of the six were currently working for the newspaper, having taken jobs there after News of the World closed. Police said the homes of all those arrested were being searched.

Mike Darcey, chief executive of News International, the Murdoch subsidiary that publishes The Sun, emailed staff at the paper after the arrests.

"As always, I share your concerns about these arrests and recognise the huge burden it places on our journalists in the daily challenge of producing Britain's most popular newspaper," he said. "I am extremely grateful to all of you who succeed in that mission despite these very challenging circumstances."

Scotland Yard gave no details of the alleged conspiracy behind Wednesday's arrests, beyond saying that the "new lines of inquiry" it was pursuing involved suspected offenses committed in 2005 and 2006.